The article deals with intertextuality applied in the concrete practice of literary scholarship. It delivers a brief introduction to the theory of intertextuality and demonstrates on the basis of three selected poems from Bolest (Pain), a collection of poetry by the Czech poet Vladimír Holan (1905-1980), how the author functionalizes allusions to other texts in his own work. Interacting with Plato, Christ and Hamlet, Holan manages the reception of his texts, upgrades his reflections to the meta-poetic level by means of referential signals and argues with already existing concepts by purposefully utilizing intertextual artifices.